1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a toner, a process cartridge including the toner, and a developer including the toner.
2. Description of Related Art
An electrophotographic or electrostatic image forming apparatus generally forms an image by taking the following steps: forming an electrostatic latent image on a photoreceptor, developing the electrostatic latent image into a toner image with a toner, transferring the toner image onto a recording medium, and fixing the toner image thereon by application of heat. A full-color image is formed by superimposing toner images of black, yellow, magenta, and cyan one another on a recording medium and simultaneously fixing them on the recording medium by application of heat.
For the purpose of reducing global environmental load, toner is generally required to be fixable at much lower temperatures. To meet this requirement, there have been various attempts to lower the softening temperature of toner. However, it has also been revealed that the lowering of the softening temperature of toner undesirably degrades its fluidity, as well as developability and transferability, under high-temperature and high-humidity conditions.
On the other hand, it is known that low-temperature-fixable toners can be produced by processes using water and/or organic solvents. However, toners produced through such processes generally contain not small an amount of residual volatile contents, which is undesirable.
JP-2008-40286-A describes a toner binder resin prepared from ortho-phthalic acid in attempting to reduce residual volatile contents.